“Chil­dren don’t do those things. Chil­dren don’t do that.”

This was the re­sponse of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der to two in­stances of in­dis­ci­pline at schools where po­lice of­fi­cers were as­signed at the start of the new school term.

Speak­ing with re­porters yes­ter­day at the launch of the UNDP’s Re­gion­al Hu­man De­vel­op­ment Re­port 2025, at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre, St Ann’s, Alexan­der said that al­ready more schools have re­quest­ed a po­lice pres­ence, and there are moves to place ad­di­tion­al of­fi­cers in schools.

Two weeks in­to the new school year, a Form One stu­dent of Coryal Sec­ondary School in Cu­mu­to be­came the first per­son to be de­tained by the new­ly formed School-Ori­ent­ed Polic­ing Unit, af­ter he was found with a quan­ti­ty of mar­i­jua­na and wrap­ping pa­per at school on Tues­day. At least one stu­dent from Preysal Sec­ondary School has al­so been sus­pend­ed for lock­ing a po­lice of­fi­cer in a class­room.

Asked about these in­ci­dents, Min­is­ter Alexan­der said, “Re­mem­ber all you said about chil­dren? Chil­dren don’t do those things. Chil­dren don’t do that. Chil­dren don’t be­have like that. You used to be­have like that when you were small?”

The min­is­ter said re­ports that the po­lice of­fi­cer who was locked in the class­room had fall­en asleep are be­ing in­ves­ti­gat­ed by the Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er.

The Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter added that the coun­try would not have been in this po­si­tion if the ini­tia­tive to place po­lice in schools had been ex­e­cut­ed by the pre­vi­ous gov­ern­ment.

“When we were call­ing for it to be done, more than five years ago, why wasn’t it done? If a tree was plant­ed five years ago, when do you bend the tree?”

But the min­is­ter said it is not too late to turn things around.

Asked if he is con­cerned about the of­fi­cers’ safe­ty in “high-risk” schools, Alexan­der said, “No, I’m not, be­cause they were trained to treat them by any law­ful means nec­es­sary.”

He re­vealed that of­fi­cers at some of these in­sti­tu­tions may be re­ceiv­ing back­up and said the Gov­ern­ment will ex­plore adding more of­fi­cers to cer­tain schools.

“That was dis­cussed to­day, and that will be ad­vanced. We’re in­ter­est­ed in turn­ing around this place from what it used to be.” De­spite the two re­port­ed in­ci­dents, Alexan­der said the pres­ence of po­lice in schools has yield­ed pos­i­tive re­sults, so much so that more schools are re­quest­ing that in­ter­ven­tion.

“You know, I don’t want to blame the schools, but let me share this with you. What we know for a fact is this, and you would have known that there are times when a lot of these schools would have put things un­der the car­pet. You know why? To save the name of the school. But now, some of the same schools are com­ing out and say­ing, ‘lis­ten, we need po­lice at this school’.”

Alexan­der added, “It’s about sav­ing the peo­ple in the school. I can’t say chil­dren, be­cause some of them don’t be­have like chil­dren. So we are sav­ing those stu­dents in the school. I don’t say chil­dren any­more, be­cause they don’t be­have like that.”

The Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter said the is­sue of the il­le­gal drug cul­ture must al­so be ex­plored to un­der­stand be­hav­iour­al is­sues at schools.

“Every time we see some­one be­hav­ing strange, we have a ten­den­cy to say mar­i­jua­na, right? Are we look­ing deeply at mol­ly and oth­er kinds of drugs like that? That’s the ques­tion of the day.”

Asked if drugs be­yond mar­i­jua­na were found in the pos­ses­sion of stu­dents, Alexan­der would on­ly say, “If I just had a ba­nana, would you see it?” The min­is­ter then walked off.